The government has admitted it did not do an impact assessment on how the IHT increase would hit UK farmers. An FOI submitted by the Conservative Rural Forum has revealed Defra couldn’t estimate how many farms would be affected—or how much they’d have to pay—as that “information is not held”. Ploughing more pressure on the government to U-turn on the policy…
It’s no wonder Starmer parroted BBC Verify’s estimate that only 500 estates a year would be affected – a claim they have since deleted. He didn’t have his own numbers. Meanwhile, as small farms face selling off their land to pay the death tax, foreign farmers are being handed £536 million – five times the revenue the tax is hoped to generate for the Treasury. As one farmer put it to Guido on Tuesday, “it’s a tax without any thought put into it”. They were right…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”